News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

In Physics of Fluids, researchers used a model to understand airborne transmission that is designed to be accessible to a wide range of people, including nonscientists. Employing concepts of fluid dynamics and factors in airborne transmission, they propose the Contagion Airborne Transmission inequality model. While not all factors may be known, it can still be used to assess relative risks. The researchers determined protection from transmission increases with physical distancing in an approximately linear proportion.

The Singapore University of Technology and Design, together with Singapore's Tan Tock Seng Hospital, developed a novel 3D printed non-metallic self-locking prosthetic arm for a patient with a forequarter amputation - it is more comfortable, flexible and 20% cheaper than a conventional prosthesis.

Scientists at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics detail the structure of dumbbell-like sequences in DNA during interphase that suggest several unseen aspects of chromosome configuration and function.

Computer modeling of the COVID-19 virus on supercomputers showed that the spike protein visits an intermediate state before it can dock to the receptor protein on the host cell membrane. This intermediate state can be useful for drug targeting to prevent the spike protein to initiate viral infection. The initial findings, which showed the existence of an intermediate semi-open state of the spike protein, was published in the Journal of Chemical Physics.

The long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) of hippocampal excitatory synapse involved in learning and memory formation in brain have been separately explained, but the molecular mechanism has not been elucidated. The group focused on the competition of exocytosis and endocytosis of AMPA-type glutamate receptors dependent on the number of calcium ions that flow into the postsynaptic neurons, and demonstrated the comprehensive understanding of the LTP and LTD by a large-scale mathematical model simulation.

Purdue University innovators are taking cues from nature to develop 3D photodetectors for biomedical imaging. The Purdue researchers used some architectural features from spider webs to develop the technology.

A team of Duke researchers has found that transcription factors have a tendency to bind strongly to "mismatched" sections of DNA, i.e. sections of the genome that were not copied correctly. The strong binding of transcription factors to these mismatched sections of regulatory DNA might be a way in which random mutations become a problem that leads to disease, including cancer.